Iron Crow Theatre, Baltimore’s award-winning professional queer theater, announced its 2025/26 Season of Survival, featuring two critically acclaimed musicals that explore the theme of resilience in times of crisis – Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey and Max Vernon’s The View Upstairs.
“As we approach the 2025/2026 season, the stakes feel higher — not just for Iron Crow Theatre, but for our community,” said Artistic Director Sean Elias. “As queer and trans voices are once again under threat, as anti-LGBTQ+ legislation resurges, as hate crimes climb, and as rhetoric from the far right grows louder and more dangerous, I am reminded that our very existence as a theater and as a people are, in fact, acts of survival.”
It’s a season theme born from necessity. It reflects the growing urgency to protect and preserve queer stories, queer bodies, and even if it feels frivolous in the face of such chaos, queer joy. As the national political tide threatens to erode decades of progress, this year’s season underscores the urgency of protecting and preserving queer people’s right to exist freely — in Baltimore or anywhere in the country. It also reflects a piece of why Iron Crow Theatre exists — to ensure queer and allied artists have a creative home where queer stories are not only heard and seen, but deeply felt.
Each production this season echoes that struggle — telling the story of a person, a family, a people, fighting to survive.
Next to Normal
Music by Tom Kitt
Book & Lyrics by Brian Yorkey
March 6 – 15, 2026
M&T Bank Exchange at France-Merrick Performing Arts Center
Directed by Natka Bianchini
Next to Normal brings Iron Crow Theatre back to The M&T Bank Exchange at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, home of the historic Hippodrome Theatre. It continues a trailblazing partnership between Baltimore’s largest theatrical presenter and one of Baltimore’s fastest-growing small professional theaters. This Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning musical has moved
audiences across the country with its raw honesty, unforgettable score, and profound humanity. At its heart, Next to Normal is a story of survival — of grief, mental illness, and the brutal unraveling of a family. And yet, it’s also a story of connection, reminding us that healing begins only when we face our pain, together. For Iron Crow, this production represents a powerful expansion of what queer theater can be. While queerness isn’t explicitly written into the text, Next to Normal is queer in its
construction: it resists resolution, breaks traditional form, and places emotional truth above convention while simultaneously allowing us to amplify the voices of other marginalized communities.
The View Upstairs
Music, Book, and Lyrics by Max Vernon
May 29 – June 14, 2026
Baltimore Theatre Project
Directed by Sean Elias
Max Vernon’s The View Upstairs is a powerful new musical inspired by the tragic 1973 arson attack on the Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans. 32 queer people lost their lives that night — the deadliest attack on the LGBTQ+ community in U.S. history until the Pulse Nightclub shooting claimed 49 lives in 2016. Justice was never served, and the broader public largely turned a blind eye. Max Vernon’s musical transforms this forgotten history into a celebration of love, resilience, and community — perfect for Pride. It’s a reminder that even from within our own communities and our own chosen families, healing and survival require radical honesty, radical forgiveness, and radical love.
Special Fall Community Gathering
November 2025
In Partnership with Monarque Restaurant
In the Fall of 2025, Iron Crow is doing something entirely different — something uniquely queer. Setting aside scripts and staging to come together in shared space: to eat, to sing, to laugh, to love. Continuing a historic partnership between Iron Crow Theatre and Atlas Restaurant Group’s Monarque restaurant, Iron Crow will host a communal gathering in the spirit of queer kinship — equal parts celebration and resistance — because survival also looks like joy — like building community and refusing to go silent. More details are on the way, but what’s already in motion is something truly meaningful.
Sustainability & Iron Crow Theatre’s +Pass Membership Program
The Season of Survival also marks Iron Crow’s commitment to sustainable, community-driven funding models. “In a time of political hostility and vanishing public support, we must forge new paths of sustainability,” Elias noted. “We cannot — and will not — rely solely on government funding to protect our artistic freedom or fulfill our mission.”
Iron Crow’s innovative +Pass Membership Program offers unlimited access to every show as often as you’d like for just $20/month or $200/year, including performances at the M&T Bank Exchange. It’s that simple. No other theater in Baltimore offers comparable access and value. +Passes can be purchased online at https://www.ironcrowtheatre.org/pluspass.
+Passes are on sale now to new and returning members. Individual tickets will be available in late fall 2025.
About Iron Crow Theatre
Established in 2009, Iron Crow Theatre is Baltimore’s award-winning professional queer theater. Iron Crow Theatre’s mission is to produce queer theater for a queer city, celebrating the renegade and the unorthodox in all of us. As Baltimore’s only queer-focused theatre dedicated to producing boundary-pushing work not often produced in the region, Iron Crow Theatre has built a reputation
for critically-acclaimed productions, strategic community partnerships, and innovative audience engagement. Recent achievements include record-breaking attendance, unanimous critical acclaim across multiple productions, and historic partnerships with Baltimore’s largest and most prestigious institutions.